!i! Swimming with the Fishies !i!

Our third day in Hawaii, we woke up early for more snorkeling.  Today, we were planning to go to Hanauma Bay Nature preserve.  You have to arrive early to Hanauma Bay in order to even park at all.

We watched the movie about protecting the coral reefs and not stepping on the rocks and then we began our descent into the extinct crater.

Carolyn and I waited on the beach until the clouds finally passed by and it was warm enough to get into the water.  We had been abandoned by the boys already!  We sat on the beach fighting off the bold birds.

Suddenly, I saw AJ racing towards me asking for the camera.  He spotted something in the water he wanted to take a picture of.  He didn't realize that he was dripping blood from a scratch on his chest. I teased him that he would be shark bait.  Then he ran back to the water.

Finally there was a break in cloud cover and I headed toward the water.  Carolyn sat on the beach reading Mockingjay and enjoying the soothing sunshine.

 The three of us began snorkeling. We saw so many different fish.

We went deeper out to sea than we ever had before.  Slowly, I am becoming more adventurous.

We saw fish we had never seen before.

And I seemed to finally get the hang of this underwater camera thing.  There is a drastic difference between these photos and the ones I took last year.  Fish are hard to take pictures of because they never hold still.

There were so many fish!  Some of them were the size of dinner platters or even larger!  As long as none of them were sharks, I was happy.  I kept falsely reassuring myself that this was probably too shallow for sharks.

We swam through narrow breaks in the reef into large open caverns filled with so many fish.

Then we would swim through a shallow gap above the reef to get into the next cavern.  I hoped and prayed my body would clear the rock.  I few times it didn't and we all ended up with reef gashes.

I swam over a rocky ledge and found myself face to face with this...

I was soooo excited!  I love sea turtles!!

Soon, another group of snorkelers stumbled into our cavern with the turtle and blocked the only exit and I began to panic.  I do not like being trapped.  Every way I tried to escape, the rocks were too high and the water to shallow to swim through.  Finally the snorkelers left and I swam to freedom.

After swimming all morning, we worked up an appetite so we decided to go find some lunch.  We decided to try a roadside stand called Tita's.  It's close to Shark's Cove.  A.J. and I shared the teriyaki beef and it was extremely delicious!

After we were sufficiently nourished, it was time for more snorkeling.  We headed back to Turtle Bay, slathered on the sunscreen, and hit the water again.  This time, we ran across a HUGE school of goatfish.

I also found species of fish I had never seen before.

And I found this little spotted toby hiding in the coral.

After swimming all day, we decided to play on the beach until sunset.  We headed over to Sunset Beach.

We raced around in the waves and tried to run in the deep sand which was difficult.  AJ and I tackled each other in the big sand piles.

We watched the sun set across the ocean and watched the hige waves lap the sandy beaches.

I don't know how life could get any better than this!